


Human, Subject; Crank

by jioo



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Death Cure Spoilers, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Series, Post-The Death Cure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jioo/pseuds/jioo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is just more life than you expected, Newton," said lady Paige. </p><p>Three months in Paradise, Thomas and Minho tried to cope. Six months, Thomas itched to confess. Eight months, a girl from group B didn't come back from her walk in the woods. Then, Newt showed up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Book Never Written

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts), [mcconnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcconnell/gifts), [nowayout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowayout/gifts).



> Dedicated to every Newt writer and reader. Thank you for writing all these heartbreaking stories, I thought I'd try to make something real yet happy out of everything you have all written.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even if the entire world take you apart, there is still a part of you left for him.

Being dead was just what he needed, only it wasn’t. He didn’t know what he was expecting. Eternal rest, maybe. No more thinking, hurting, and aching for all the things he could and could not name. Whatever death was, he hadn’t expected it to be a round enamel room without an exit. And then it was a cool metallic grate with the severed printed words spelling LOCKDOWN. Newt didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t want to speak. Not when his heart kept sinking beyond the soles of his feet, down the carpeted rug that imprinted his numb footprints before erasing every trace of him seconds after.

He still didn’t speak when he was put into a new room. He wasn’t thinking, he found that he couldn’t bother to do so. Newt didn’t know where he was but he felt no sense off danger, no fear, no nothing. Just this blank slate, his mind fizzing in white noise, and he found himself losing track of any coherent thought every few seconds. It should bother him, only it didn’t.

“Newton,” a lady’s voice rang out of nowhere, sending Newt turning around, only to realise somebody had placed him in a mahogany chair.

The lady looked half-dead, her face wrinkled and her bun hair tousled. There was dullness in her eyes that was only surface deep. Newt found himself sucking in a long breath, feeling the becoming of something wild behind those facade. The woman’s got The Flare.

But then she smiled and the world seemed to straighten out nicely again.

“I was getting worried,” she said. “Didn’t think you’d wake up.”

That made something tick in his head, a sort of sudden itch and ache threatening to engulf him. Before he could even scowl the itch was gone.

“I- what?” Newt stammered, blinking.

“You were unconscious for several weeks,” the lady said, now standing up to smooth down her white lab coat that slung over her regular high end clothes. “I thought it would be best to wait for you to wake. We didn't want to Inject without your consent.”

Newt blanched. He wasn’t dead. Not only that he wasn’t dead, he was being experimented.

The horror of it all must have showed, because the next moment the lady moved forward, crouching down to put a hand on Newt’s chair, the other on his left arm. She gently flipped it over so the inside of his wrist showed. He stared.

“You wouldn’t wake up. We couldn’t wait. We Injected you two weeks ago.”

_Injected? What did that even mean?_

Before he could get a word in, she went on, her eyes dull and kind but with a hint of madness that did not sit well with him. She was a crank. He was a crank. They were the same, and she, by far, was even saner than him, so why should he be scared? She should be scared of him. He was definitely madder the last time he checked.

“You got the Flare,” the lady said, not unkindly.

Newt didn’t even flinch. “So do you.”

“I do,” she nodded unperturbed as though he had just told her his name. “Not everybody is safe from it.”

“I know that.” He frowned. _Who was this woman anyway? Why was she lecturing him like he didn’t already know what this was all about?_

Then her next words swept the solid ground from under Newt completely.

“I’m not talking about those who are Immune, Newton. I’m talking about the Injection.”

“The Injection?” Something in his stomach unsettled him. He felt sick. He knew where this was going. The strongest sense of dread overwhelmed him and he shoved it back down.

“The Injection. It keeps the Flare at bay.”

“The Bliss, you mean.”

“No, Newton. Not The Bliss. The Bliss only slows down the damage. The Injection however acts as a defence mechanism the same way innate immunity keeps the Immunes from the damage of The Flare.”

Newt blinked. It didn’t help that he couldn’t think properly.

“So you found the cure, then” he said.

But again, the woman shook her head. “Not by a long shot. Like those with innate immunity, Injections don’t work on everybody.”

“And… it worked on me,” Newt said, feeling numb. So he really wasn’t dead.

The woman nodded.

“Hang on. But I, I was,” he stammered, trying to recall the memories that weren’t there. He shuddered as the sound of a distant gunshot rang in his ears, but that was it, as much as he tried to recall, that was it. He couldn’t remember anything else.

One thing was certain. Newt was sure he had died.

And Newt was sure another boy played a part in it somewhere. The only face he could remember. The boy with brown hair, teary eyes and words of ‘ _I can’t, I can’t_ ’. Who the boy was, Newt didn’t know, but the ache that scab of memory left him with was enough to show how much he must have meant to him.

_I trusted you… nobody else._

The woman’s voice brought him back. “What do you remember, Newton?”

Newt shook his head, his heart pounding so loud that it throbbed in his ears.

“Nothing. Just,” he paused, staring ahead, the ticking clock on the wall told him it was ten. He didn’t know whether it was night or morning. “I died. I was dead.”

The lady stood up then, bringing Newt’s attention back from the clock. There was kindness in her eyes in the midst of all weariness. Madness sat at bay, as if waiting for the right time to strike. Newt looked away.

“What matters now is that you aren’t,” the lady said. her careful hand touched his head almost too gently, like she was afraid to set something off. “Make the best of it.”

 

*

 

Two weeks later, Newt appeared in the office again, bandage off, memories still nowhere to be found. The woman sat behind the desk, tired, worn yet still quite human.

Newt shifted by the door. He had never asked for her name. A part of him tried to convince himself it didn’t matter.

So, he said something else. “There was this boy.”

The lady looked up. He sucked in a breath, fidgeting with a loose thread of his sweater. He said, “This boy, I keep seeing him. Who, who is he?”

“There were a lot of boys where you came from, Newton.”

Newt shook his head. “It’s just him. In here.” He brought his hand up to his temple, but then put it down telling himself he looked silly.

The lady gestured for him to sit down. He did so, albeit gingerly.

“What does he look like?” she asked, as though to humour him.

Newt didn’t care, he just wanted to get it out.

“He,” Newt paused. “He’s young. Sad. During the day, mostly, he’s crying like he’d lost someone. At night, some nights, I have these dreams, he’s in them, smiling, running. He has these eyes that-” he stopped. He knew he wasn’t making any sense.

The lady watched him, wistful, attentive.

“There were a lot of sad boys where you came from,” she said.

“Why can’t I remember any of them?” he asked.

She paused, before sighing like she was out of options. “It’s probably best that you can’t.”

Newt started to frown. “What, what happened to me really?”

 

*

 

(He keeps the note. Keeps it in the pocket of his jeans, carries it around with him all the time, a physical reminder of his guilt that he can’t let go of. It might have been what Newt wanted but that doesn’t make Thomas hate himself any less for pulling the trigger.

He looks around, taking in the vibrant colours that surround him, the people he doesn’t know that well yet and their lively chatter. The place is bursting with life and he isn’t sure he belongs here, doesn’t see how he could when it feels like all that’s left of him are broken pieces that he can’t glue back together.

They know he’s hiding something from them. Minho, Brenda. Maybe even Aris. And sometimes Thomas wants to tell them. Wants to tell Minho, mostly, because he needs someone to be angry with him, to remind him what a piece-of-klunk friend he is, and he’s sure Minho would be absolutely livid if he found out about what Thomas had to do. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d be too hurt to even react. Maybe he’d feel guilty, too, even though he shouldn’t.

Thomas wonders how many of the survivors feel guilty about being here. Wonders how many of them believe that those who didn’t make it deserved to be here more. Thomas can name at least three people off the top of his head. There are more, of course there are, but the three of them stand out. The three deaths he feels responsible for.

And it hurts. Remembering hurts so much, but the images are burned into his mind forever, providing a constant ache that makes his heart clench whenever he has a spare moment. It hurts to think about Chuck jumping in front of Thomas because he was being controlled, it hurts to remember the dagger sticking out of the boy’s chest. It hurts to think about Teresa sacrificing herself so that Thomas could live, to remember the last words she didn’t manage to utter but which Thomas convinced himself he could hear nonetheless. It hurts to think about the boy who was on Thomas’ side from the very beginning, who trusted him and believed in him even when no one else did.

He took Newt for granted at times, he realises. Newt’s faith in Thomas and his unwavering support, but also Newt’s strength and his will to live. And he’s so, so sorry that he couldn’t see past Newt’s warm smile and bright eyes. That he couldn’t find a buggin’ cure. That he couldn’t save him.

That he only realised how much Newt meant to him when he learned he was going to lose him.

He thinks about all the times Newt chose him over anyone else. He wishes he’d understood sooner what that meant.)

 

*

 

There weren’t many people Thomas talked to in Paradise. Of course, there was Minho and Brenda; he ran with Minho first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and chatted listlessly to Brenda every few hours.

Other than that, he was alone.

Being alone brought back the last of things Thomas wanted to remember.

There was a girl — Flora — whom he often saw by the woods disappearing every morning and reappearing later in the days. From what he knew, her girlfriend was killed at WICKED headquarters. She had never really came to terms with it. Back in the Glade, she had been pretty much the equivalent to a Med-Jack.

They never talked about anything in particular, always steering the conversation away from all those deaths, no matter how many times Thomas brought it up.

It was autumn, the grass went from lush green to dry brown. Leaves fell from their trees, the wind started to pick up. He fiddled with the dead blades in front of him before tossing them at Flora. She swatted them away, ruffling them out of her hair. She prodded his knee, smiling a little.

Their knees kept brushing as they sat there cross-legged. Ahead, the woods casted horrific shadows blacking out the sun, its last few rays straining across the tranquility.

From the grief and the mess inside both of their heads, any kind of peace was to be laughed at.

“Your girlfriend,” he said suddenly, “What was her name?”

Flora visibly flinched, body going stiff, jaw clenching. She cleared her throat twice before answering.

“Alice,” she said. “Her name was Alice.” She glanced at Thomas; he nodded. Suddenly she was talking fast, eyes wide, hands gesturing wildly.

“She used to help me, you know, around the Glade and stuff, and we had this stupid tradition that at the end of every week we’d find a bunch of each others favourite flowers and plants and herbs and tie them together and put them next to our pillows that night. She used to turn to me during the night, just when I was about to fall asleep she’d say, ‘We’re gonna get out of here, Flora. One day we’re gonna get out of here and have our own place in a big city, and little kiddies, we’ll be mama’s, and I’m never leaving you, Flora. I promise’.”

Flora’s shoulders were shaking with sobs when she finished. Thomas squeezed her hand.

“And then Aris had to show up, and everything went to hell, and Rachel and a ton of others died, and just as we’re getting through the Flat Trans here, Alice’s shot down, and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.” Unable to continue, Flora hugged her knees and cried, harder than she had in months, a screen of tears on her face.

Thomas said nothing. The void in his chest gaped wide, somehow, with the added loss of Alice, a girl he probably had only caught a glimpse of during his time with Group B. Knowing he hadn’t even tried to know her, somehow, hurt more.

“What about you?” Flora asked, eyes on the horizon. “Anyone catch your eye back at the Glade?”

His stomach tensed, bile rising in his throat and he shoved it back down.

In his minds eyes, he saw blonde hair. He saw a tall, lean body, a friendly smile, eyes that crinkled at the sides, and a limp. He felt the past comforting hand on his shoulder, remembered the way their bodies slanted together, hands in his hair, breath gasping… And then,  _“Please, Tommy. Please.”_

“No,” Thomas said, scrunching his eyes shut, the sound of the gunshot still ringing in his ears. “There was nobody.”

 

 


	2. The Forgotten Feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt knew there was something before Thomas; he just couldn't remember what it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still the very remixed chaptered-thing inspired by mcconnell and nowayout, because your stories punched me in the heart and I thought we could use all your wonderful talents to make a happier Newt-world. Thank you so much for 'His Tommy' and 'and this is the map of my heart'.
> 
> Dedicated to every Newt reader and writer, because we are only human and we need believable rainbows sometimes. (Keyword being 'Believable'.)

There’d been a boy, Newt remembered that much.

He had brown hair and brown eyes and pasty skin and long limbs. He had a nice smile — a crooked, toothy one that was almost never without meaning. He’d been Newt’s, hadn’t he? It seemed likely; the thought of him and that grin and that figure was enough to make Newt’s heart twist and his stomach do flip-flops. They’d once held hands and hugged, like the lovers they must have been. Or might have been — he wasn’t sure.

He wondered when the boy with no name would come back to him…

 

With sweet nothings on his tongue, he felt it — a white-hot pain, fleeting, fading — and then he was slipping. Those words were wedged in his throat, words like _thank you_ and _goodbye_ and _I always loved you_ , but dying.

Dying, dying, dying…

The images were formed from small lights, twinkling against a backdrop of nothing.

 

The shank that clambered out of the Box was just like the others before him — all skin and bones and knobby knees, tear-tipped eyes and quivering lips. He asked the same questions, too; the _'where am I'_ s and _'who are you'_ s becoming almost overwhelming. Newt knew he should’ve been annoyed by it, except he wasn’t, and that confused him about as much as the Glade did itself.

“What did I do — why’d they send me here?”

And Newt wished he could answer that – could answer everything – but he couldn’t and it sucked.

 

_Break your promise and I’ll never forgive you._

 

*

 

The first two months went by without much to do. Newt ate, slept, ate, meandered, slept some more, tried to sneak into the kitchen, then tried to sneak a glimpse out the window, and he even went as far as to make conversation with a few portraits on the wall. _Being alive was boring_. He didn’t know what to do with himself most of his days, and his nights were plagued with visions of the boy with tear-filled eyes, Newt’s name on the tip of his tongue. Life was driving him up the wall. The boy in his head was driving him up the wall. Newt didn’t know where he was, but he didn’t feel the need to escape either.

A few times, he caught glimpses of a few people in white lab coats but they were pretty much invisible to him. Newt tried to steer clear from them, his instincts screaming at him that they were bad news. None of them tried to talk to him nor take him anywhere, which Newt found strange considering something in his head was prodding at him to remain guarded and suspicious around these people.

The place was pretty much a manor, cathedral windows that were barred up, rooms only illuminated with faux bits and bulbs. He was pretty much alone, except for the diseased lady who was not a very good conversationalist.

Not that Newt remembered ever talking to anybody before her, so there weren’t many options for him to compare her with. But she was _dull_ for a crank. Newt pretty much remembered the madness of the cranks he had met, but never any particular crank themselves. He could recall normal people and their behaviours and none of those things actually helped him feel any better.

So, when the third month loomed, Newt barged into the lady’s office to see her just as tired yet as human as the other hundred times he’d found her there. The first words that left his mouth wasn’t exactly what he expected.

“Right,” he said. “What’s your name?”

The question caught both of them off-guard and Newt found himself wrong footed. The woman looked up from whatever she was doing on the desk, surprise shimmered behind her eyes.

“My name is Ava,” the lady said, gesturing for him to sit on the same mahogany chair he’d always sat. “Most people call me lady Paige.”

Newt slumped down, no longer feeling any kind of wariness around this woman. He was pretty used to her now, and sometimes he wondered if she ever left this room.

“Am I not a bloody person?” he asked, confused.

The woman stared at him, as if trying to decide for certain what Newt was. Slowly, she said, “Yes.”

“All right. Then I’m callin’ you lady Paige, lady,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows at him but commented on nothing. Before she could go back to her work however, Newt piped up again. “Is there anything to do around here?”

This seemed to surprise lady Paige more than any of the questions he had managed to bombard her for the past months.

“I thought you’d appreciate the idleness after all you’d been through, Newton,” she said, putting down her pen.

“After all I’d been through?” Newt prodded, not sure if he wanted to find out.

“What do you remember?” she asked again, just as she’d always asked him every time he visited her.

Newt paused.

“I don’t remember events,” he tried to tell her, after more flashes from last night he decided he wanted some answers. “I can remember… feelings.”

Lady Paige tilted her head, gesturing for him to go on. Newt began to fidget with the hem of his shirt, averting her stare.

“These buggin’ feelings, they are out of place, drivin’ me nuts,” he said, glaring at the splotch of white on the edge of the wooden desk. “Those people with their white coats and ugly faces. I hate ‘em, and I know it’s right to hate ‘em. Doing nothin’, nothin’ just doesn’t feel right. I _should_ be doing somethin’, but I just can’t remember what.” He looked up then, to find lady Paige still listening, attentive as ever. “And I shouldn’t be alone. Not by myself. Never by myself. I need somethin’ to do, people to look after, I need… I,” Newt paused, mind reeling like broken film reels.

The boy. The boy in his mind’s eyes. That reckless boy, always burning with questions and absolute idiocy, curiosity and everything that brought bad news. The dark haired boy, a walking enigma dancing on the line between bravery and stupidity. Him who left everyone dumbstruck. Him who gave people hope.

“He’s a buggin’ hurricane.”

“Newton?”

Newt’s attention snapped back to the woman in front of him. She eyed him with something that looked like concern and a hint of hope. _Hope?_

“Newton. What is it?”

“The boy,” Newt blurted out. “Him. I need to see him. Where is he?”

Lady Paige seemed to have straightened up in her seat, looking as determined as Newt felt.

“Tell me more about him. If he’s still around, perhaps we’ll be able to find him.”

 

 

_*_

 

“What do you do all the time in the woods?” Thomas found himself asking Flora on the fourth month. All the immunes were having this barbecue and campfire by the beach, something that resembled a normal life.

Only it made Thomas ache for the hard times even more. He felt out of place and out of time. The idleness and the tranquility made him restless and offered him too much time to reflect on the things he could have done differently.

It had been months, and the more time passed, the more he regretted what he did. Minho only reminded Thomas more of what he’d done, and no matter how hard Minho tried to put on the tough act, Thomas could see how much the shank missed his best friend.

Thomas ached for Newt.

They did not talk about him. Never tried. And Thomas knew they probably never would.

Flora shrugged. “Just exploring, ya know.” And then she added, “I like doing stuff on my own,” as if to make sure Thomas wouldn’t offer to join her.

Thomas shrugged back. He found her strange. He would go mad if he had to be alone.

 

*

 

_“Tommy, slim yourself.”_

_Newt had been expecting it — why wouldn’t he? — and so he would not react. He would not cry, or crumble, because he was above that. He was. But Tommy was falling over, shaking, staring at the ground, and it was enough to make something in Newt’s chest snap._

_Tommy looked at him, eyes wide and so like how they’d been when he first crawled out of the Box. And it hurt. “Slim myself?” He sounded incredulous. “That old shank just said you’re not immune to the Flare. How can you –”_

 

_*_

 

So, on the sixth month, he knew he needed to tell somebody. He told Flora. Thomas told her mostly because she didn’t talk to anybody, she wasn’t close to anybody, and for a reason unknown to himself, he felt that he could trust her.

Thomas told her everything. And everything was Newt.

“I’ve met many people in my life, and even without my memory, I’m sure I loved a whole bunch of people, or I wouldn’t have done what I did,” Thomas went on, wrenching out patches of dead grass.

It was supposed to be winter or the end of it at least but it wasn’t cold. It wasn’t any colder than the first day here, yet the trees and all of nature decided to die anyway.

Way to remind Thomas that nothing ever stayed.

“Newt wasn’t one of them,” he said. His mind scampered off to Chuck and Teresa and all the people he cared about. The more time passed, the more Thomas’ mind seemed to distinguish Newt apart from all those people.

He cared so much for Newt that it didn’t make sense that Newt was dead. And Thomas had killed him. He would never get over that. It made him sick sometimes to know that he wouldn’t have felt this sad if it was Teresa he had killed. If Teresa had died in his hands, would he feel this bad? Thomas tried to shove that thought away, as a shudder ran through his spine. He hated himself for being like this.

“I don’t think I can ever let him go,” he said hollowly. “I–” he sucked in a sharp breath, tears stung the back of his eyes. “It doesn’t make sense that he isn’t here. I just-” He choked, no longer able to think properly. 

He felt arms circled him, shaky words in his ears, “People will make you fall in love all the time, Thomas.” Then what Flora said next broke him altogether. “Of course he wasn’t one of them. He was different. He made you stay in love.”

 

 

*

 

Newt practically was running, a dull ache throbbed through his leg but there wasn’t any pain there. He was sure it was supposed to hurt more, but it didn’t and that didn’t feel right. He pushed the thought away as he made it around the corner, clambering through the big wooden set of doors without any courtesy.

_Don’t do it, Tommy! Don’t you bloody do it!_

“His name is Tommy, and he breaks way too many rules!” Newt said the moment he stumbled inside.

An itch in his brain told him there was something wrong, but he just couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. Lady Paige was at her desk, looking just the same, perhaps a little more tired than he’d seen her the past week. But something in the air was off, and Newt wondered if he’d barged into a certain situation he wasn’t supposed to witness.

There was a staff in a white coat. The staff wasn’t paying attention to him, even with all the noise, as she continued to monitor whatever medical equipment that was currently attached to lady Paige.

“Uh, should I come back?” he asked.

The white coat staff was already packing her things, and the tired woman he’d grown quite fond of shook her head, gesturing for him to sit down. As the doors closed behind them, the woman smiled.

“So you finally got a name,” she said.

Newt nodded, scratching the tip of his nose with a knuckle.

_I bloody remember you, Tommy._

“It came to me last night.”

 

*

 

(It hit him then, the memory of a feeling Newt could easily understand even if he didn’t remember experiencing it himself. It was why it had taken him so long to figure out what was going on. _How was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to know this was what it felt like?_

He had to clench his fists to stop his arms from doing something stupid, from wrapping themselves around Tommy like they seem to want to be doing. Newt shook his head minutely; now was not the time.

He walked up to Tommy with a smile he couldn’t suppress, a smile that he hoped didn’t reveal too much. “Glad you’re not bloody dead, Tommy. I’m really, really glad.”)

 


	3. In Days to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your soul stained my shoulders. I cannot undo you from my blood.

Thomas headed down the river.

He had taken the habit of coming to see him, the ghost of his past, lingering in the water's distorted reflection every morning after his run with Minho. Dark and hopeful eyes untainted by knowledge, a bright worn-out grin that promised all his friends a whole other world, such ignorance in his own reflection. Thomas could still feel the muscle strength that he no longer needed, the tension in his body that would soon evaporate with the changing time.

Time would erode them all.

"Thomas."

He didn't recognise that person any more. Staring back was someone who was once willing to leave his own friends behind for what he believed was a better future for the rest, because he believed it would all be lost in time, but Thomas couldn't even fit back into that mould. He hadn't been able to get himself onto that surgery table for the sake of humanity, yet still thought it was granted that others would have to die for the cause.

With those memories, he had lost the better part of himself. The only part that made him worth anything. His clumsy half-assed resolve had killed so many, and the brightness of his world had died with them.

"Thomas?"

Fall was here. The leaves were almost all dead.

A shadow loomed behind him, and a second later Minho's exhausted face appeared next to him in the water. That was how most people in his life were to him: leaves floating down a river current, twisting and turning away from where he was — a stubborn and unmoving stone. Some of them stopped, but eventually they all washed away from him, nothing but distant flashes of gold or orange downstream, faint memories in his mind.

 _I promised I'd save him, take him home! I_ promised _him!_

"Thomas!"

"Yeah," said Thomas.

"You seen Flora anywhere?" asked Minho.

Thomas blinked out of his reverie. "Flora?"

"Yeah, y'know. The girl you always hang out with in the afternoons."

"Oh. Where is she?" asked Thomas, finally tearing his gaze away from the slow ripples in the water.

Minho rolled his eyes. "That's what I'm asking, shank. A couple of girls from group B who Flora shares a hut with are looking for her. Apparently she hasn't come back yet."

Thomas frowned. "What? You mean since last night?"

"That's what I'm saying. She's missing."

 

*

 

Newt stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, looking for a hint of his past self that was no longer there. He had been having nightmares. Literal nightmares with corpses and blood and a toddler's body stuffed inside an opening of a wall. Newt remembered a weapon and veiny hands that aimed it at begging blurry figures he must've once called friends. Had he killed them?

A sharp pain seared through the inside of his skull, leaving him clutching his temples and quickly running his head under the faucet. He panted, forced open his eyes, staring at crimson red swirling down the drain.

There was a knock on the door.

"Newton?"

Newt quickly turned off the faucet, dried his face with a towel, staining the fabric with the remains of blood from his nose.

"Newton."

He threw it into the hamper.

"Just a sec," he called out.

A woman in a lab coat was standing in front of the door, holding a steel tray of syringes and bottles. 

The needle was sharp but not as much as the pain that came with a sudden influx of memories. He gritted his teeth.

"Is this necessary?" 

"Yes. You need the Injection in your system, Newton," said the woman. "Lady Paige needs you alive."

"Why?" 

Newt had been plagued with this question lately. Why was he alive? No, more specifically, why wasn't he dead? There was something very wrong with the world, people were dying off, and here he was, safe inside a manor with only a few inkling ideas of life out of it. 

The woman shrugged. "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

Before he could say anything else, a pair of footsteps entered the examination room. He turned around, wincing when the woman retracted the needle, letting his arm free. As the examination room door closed, Newt heard the sound of shouting that was instantly muffled. 

"What's going on?" said Newt.

"After months of searching, we've found the whereabouts of the boy you've been looking for," said Lady Paige. "It's almost impossible to get there, but I believe I can provide some sort of transport. You will need to pack."

"He's alive?" said Newt, staring at Lady Paige incredulously.

There was a pause.

"I believe so, yes."

His head was spinning was the sudden rising of hope, the fathomless swelling of his heart that left him grinning like a crank. He let out a breathy laughter, before schooling his features into something less happy. He had long ago stopped trying to make sense of these feelings and familiarities, only doing his best to cling onto every shred of the past that unfurled themselves for him. Both the good memories, and the other ones.

"What I don't get is why you are helping me," said Newt. 

As the lab coat woman left, Lady Paige sat down in the examiner's chair. "Newton. As you well know, the world is in catastrophe. People lose their families, loved ones, and sacrifices are made."

"I know that," said Newt impatiently. "What does that have to do with —"

Lady Paige stood up. "We are all dying. Some faster than others. Sometimes this process can be halted. Sometimes people are recovered from the brink of death. Most of the times, our reasons for our kindness are selfish."

As Lady Paige made for the exit leaving Newt at a complete loss, she turned around with a stiff smile.

"Come to my office after dinner, Newton. There's someone I'd like you to meet."

  
*

  
  
"Why are you packing?" said Thomas the moment he stepped into Brenda's hut which had suddenly been turned into an armoury.

"Glad to have you with us, amigo!" said Jorge, sharpening up his fishing spear, littering all the sawdust on the floor.

Brenda gave Jorge a dirty look, before turning to address Thomas. "Jorge and I are going to look for Flora."

"Inside the woods?" said Thomas warily.

"Where else?"

"But Flora doesn't like people going into her woods," said Thomas.

"Is this really the time to respect people's personal boundaries?" said Minho who had appeared at the door. "One of our people are missing, Thomas." He turned to Brenda saying in a worried tone. "Sure you will be okay?"

"Please, I can take care of myself," said Brenda with an eye roll. "Besides, I have Jorge with me. And I think… well, we have an idea where we should be looking."

"You can't know that," said Thomas.

"Man, you are one butt-load of sunshine, let me tell you." Minho grabbed him by the shoulder, dragging him out of the hut. "C'mon, let's go finish building that ping pong table you've been stalling."

They walked past the grassy field that was yellowing, down to the sand that got inside their sandals and toes. Minho kicked his sandals off and stretched, the sun cascading down his face and chest, making him glow golden like a warrior statue. He let out a sigh of contentment that held a hint of sadness. Thomas thought he knew what Minho was thinking, and Thomas was thinking it too. How he wished Newt could be here with them, but unlike Minho who had that shred of hope that Newt was alive, Thomas's Newt was long dead.

Sometimes, it made Thomas wish he could have died with him. That he hadn't valued his own life so much. What had he been so scared of anyway?

This guilt was so much worse.

"C'mon, man. It's been almost a year," said Minho, patting him on the shoulder.

"Minho," said Thomas, voice catching his throat and cracking. "I…"

Minho's eyes softened, pulling Thomas into a brotherly hug with the words, "I know."

_I bloody remember you, Tommy._

Thomas choked. "No, you don't."

"I miss him, too," said Minho.

Thomas's arms remained limp by his sides, heart pounding in ears, adrenaline rushing inside his veins. "It's not that. There's something. I…I never had the chance to tell you."

_Tommy, slim yourself._

 

*

 

Newt had been making a friend, talking to her through the crack under the door as she ate her meals on the other side. He'd been building his rapport as the meal deliverer to the patients in the lockdown ward. He believed that this ward was where he had first woken up in. Steel doors and padded walls, sterile corridors and the word spelling LOCKDOWN. 

"I am bloody telling you, Alice, that Paige woman is about to lose it," said Newt. "She doesn't give me straight answers any more."  
  
"Quit complaining," said a girl's voice from the other side, followed by satisfied sounds of munching. "At least she lets you out."  
  
"Yeah, but she doesn't tell me why."  
  
"Does it really matter? She went to all that trouble to find that friend you're looking for," said Alice. "I wish someone would find my girlfriend for me."  
  
Newt grumbled to himself, picking at the loose thread of his shirt, which had become an annoying habit of his. He wondered if he was also like this in the past. Newt wasn't sure he liked being alive. It wasn't enough. He didn't have anything to live for.

_Glad you’re not bloody dead, Tommy. I’m really, really glad._

"Newton?" A man in a white jumpsuit appeared at the end of the corridor. "It's long after dinner. Lady Paige and her guest are waiting."

Newt cursed under his breath, bidding a quick goodbye to Alice and scrambled to his feet.

"Why don't you have a clock inside this place?" complained Newt.

The man rolled his eyes. "There's nobody to look at it."

It wasn't long before Newt was standing in front of the set of doors that led to Lady Paige's office. There was a faint throbbing in his ankle, a memory of a pain that should be there that wasn't. Newt sighed, knocked on the door and opened it without waiting.

Lady Paige wasn't sitting in her usual seat, but on the sofa in the corner of the room. There was a brown girl with flowing black hair sitting in an armchair across from her. Her clothes were in tatters, grime matted to her face, and a few scratches on her cheek.

All cordialities were thrown out the window when Newt suddenly blurted out, "Er — What happened to you?"

Lady Paige threw him a pointed look, but the girl just gave him this strange smile that held more meaning than Newt was allowed to know.

"It's a rough world out there, my friend. Gotta thank this lady here for sending a hovercopter after me when I fell into a glitchy flat-trans. Just as I was trying to kill myself. Isn't it fate or what?" said the girl. She stood up and offered Newt her hand. "I'm Flora."

Newt strode over to take it, ignoring the sudden itch inside his skull as though her words had pricked on a forgotten memory. It came with a flash of a sky, the rough texture of vines cutting into his palms, and his feet hovering the edge of a gigantic maze. A maze.

"Hey, you alright?" Flora's voice penetrated his thoughts, grounding him to reality.

_That's called hypocrisy, you shuck face piece of —!_

Newt opened his eyes, seeing only the dark red of the carpet, hands curling into fists on the floor. There was a palm on his back and arms helping him up. Lady Paige, judging by the smell of her perfume.

"Sit down, Newton," said Lady Paige.

Newt curled into the soft armchair and took a deep breath. "I'm fine," he said to no one in particular. "Memories hurt, that's all."

When he looked up, Flora was staring down at him with new light in her eyes. A light of recognition.

"So you're Newt," said Flora thoughtfully. "You know, Thomas has been crying his eyes out over you."

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a remix chaptered-thing, inspired by:  
> mcconnell's "His Tommy": http://archiveofourown.org/works/777290  
> stardustandmagic's "had I known how to save a life": http://archiveofourown.org/works/1741562  
> nowayout's "and this is the map to my heart": http://archiveofourown.org/works/2419814  
> and every other Newt fic there is on this scorched planet.
> 
> Dedicated to every Newt writer and reader. Thank you for writing all these heartbreaking stories, I thought I'd try to make something real yet happy out of everything you have all written.


End file.
